Latest Lessons

Before getting to the “Sevens” lick, I’m going to break down the technique involved so that you will be able to apply this idea to creating riffs of your own. The genesis of the lick was in trying to find a new way to play a major-seven arpeggio. I started out by breaking it down into two notes per string, as shown in FIGURE 1a.

Since we guitarists tend to enjoy sick sounds, we thought we'd share this lesson video by Swedish guitar whiz Mattias Eklundh. In the clip, which is titled "Harmonics #5," Eklundh lays down some basics about how harmonics work.

In this new Guitar World video, GW's tech editor, Paul Riario, shows you how to make basic adjustments to your guitar's truss rod. In the clip, which you can check out below, Riario is joined by an Epiphone ES-339 PRO and a Fender Strat.

You don’t need to go very far to find a cool-sounding scale that can jazz up your blues solos in no time. We’ll be looking into the mixed blues scale, which combines the notes from the minor and major blues scales to outline the underlying blues chord changes, while retaining a healthy dose of the blues at the same time.

Aside from the additional heaviness this tuning provides by extending the instrument’s range downward, having the bottom two strings tuned a fifth apart—D to A—enables one to play a root-fifth power chord simply by strumming the two strings open or barring a finger across them at any given fret.

I’ve often been associated with players that use specific picking techniques, such as sweep picking, economy picking, hybrid picking and so on. In truth, I have no idea what any of these terms mean. Sweep picking does not appeal to me at all.

A favorite compositional technique of mine in the songs I record and perform with Revocation is to incorporate the use of odd and shifting meters in the writing of primary riffs. Another cool approach I often take is to combine straight 4/4 time with odd meters to create some interesting and unique amalgamations.

Taking techniques from different instruments and applying them to the guitar can open up a whole new approach to the instrument and add freshness to your playing and ideas. In this lesson, we will look at approaching the guitar in the style of a sitar and Indian mandolin. A sitar has many strings (up to 20, to be exact). Ironically, out of all of these strings, most of the time only one of them is used to do the actual playing.

I’d like to focus on riffs and rhythm ideas that represent what I think of as “the real deal” metal. I’ve designed these riffs to help you build up both your pick-and fret-hand technique in regard to executing pure metal ideas like these with power and precision.

In this lesson, you will learn how to play and apply 4th chords to the I7, IV7 and V7 chords of a blues progression in order to bring a modern vibe to your comping ideas, as well as learn a study that you can use to hear these shapes in a musical situation.